Search - Magazine :: Secondhand Daylight

Top Ten Band, Top Ten Album

S. A. Keister | Los Angeles, CA | 06/08/2004

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I can't really say more than other listeners here have already said, but let me just add that in my 35 years of collecting music, "Secondhand Daylight" is one of my top ten albums. It's the only album I can remember seeing here that received 5 starts from every reviewer, save one, whose main complaint is that some songs are scary! That's a complaint? Yes, there are some eerie, creepy songs here. Check out the cover - a head on a pike in a barren, scarred landscape! But, these songs are about the horror of emotions and relationships and nations, the way people treat each other. No one has ever said it with more clarity or humor than Howard DeVoto, undoubtedly one of the finest lyricists of our time, up there with Peter Hamill and Roger Waters. This was the first punk/progressive album. Magazine invented the genre and were followed by many imitators and devotees, but none who did it as well. Unfortunately, they never again achieved the level of the art form that they reached on this album. Other albums had flashes of this same brilliance, notably their first, "Real Life," which is a great work in its own right, leaning more toward rock than progressive, but "Secondhand Daylight" is strong from start to finish. Brilliant musicianship by one and all, and yes, Barry Adamson makes of the bass a paintbrush in a way uniquely his own, as did J.J. Burnel and John Entwistle. I find the songs here have not aged at all. Anyone interested in the annals of rock and progressive rock should not miss "Second Daylight." Magazine were a seminal band, and this is their hallmark."

Thin Air indeed!

S. White | Sydney, NSW Australia | 01/14/2002

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I hope I can express in words how important and viceral this album is to me, so here I shall attempt the impossible. Discussion of this album is almost impossible as it is pure aesthetics and aural alienation personafied. An album whose perfection is conceptually so far ahead of it's time that I haven't bothered buying anything since this period because essentially nothing *new* or worthwhile has happened.This album floated out of a tape deck late one dusky evening as a girlfriend and I kanoodled for the first time when I was 14 years old, I am now 30. I was scarred deeply by the eerie perfection and calculated paranoia this work evokes and found myself literally entering an altered state. I am a professional musician of a family of muso's and consider myself a serious knowledge on music. This album is without a doubt probably the most influential and perfect record I have EVER heard in my life. John Mcgeough's (Guitar) Vichey French minimalism and elegantly oblique saxophony is superlative and sublime. Mcgeough it should be noted wrote the long play instrumental that to this day sends shivers up my spine, he wrote it on piano and then transcibed it to other instruments.Barry Adamson (Bass) as one reviewer correctly pronounced, IS the bottom end of the world as he weaves his ultimate fat, liquid-toned, fretless flanged, bass lines that thump and resonate so deep and hard, he surely proves that nobody plays bass like him in the world. Listen to the end of Cut out Shapes for the most mind blowing pulsing, phat bass lines as genius Devoto sings, "We met in a psychiatric unit!". Every track on this album is a total masterpiece including one of my all time favourites "Feed the Enemy", "No room to move, no room for doubt!"From the bizzare album art work in weird sickly yet soothing psyche ward green, the head and mask on a stake, to the playlist and the way it has been ordered, this album attained a perfection so beyond the conceptual understanding of the post punk genre, that it essentially flopped! But to me that was it's greatest secret and success, because without a doubt mediocrity rules. That these guys never made another album like this, their last, Magic Murder and the Weather, came very close in some instances, is absolutely tragic! This band as far as I am concerned were from outer space to be playing music this beautiful and utopian in 1979, what with Dave Forumula's menacing and erudite carnavalesque synth lines and the drummers fabulously boxy/reverb skins and slightly phased cymbals... PERFECTION! I ache when I listen to this record because I wonder if anyone else out there understands just how incredible this entire album is and how perfect this combination of musicians were I won't even get into Devoto, the guy was a narrative-noir of self effacing angst and without being tuneful perse pulls off being the greatest singer. This band was an ART BAND and even that doesn't do them justice, in the same way the Doors were an Art Band; performance art! I learnt more from Mcgeough as a guitar player growing up than anyone else, he was my god, as was this band.If you want to take the next logical step, check out my other all time favourite band and album. Mcgeough left Magazine to join Siouxsie and the Banshees, although he did write and play on Kaleidescope (Christine and Happy House, are incredible!) get the album JUJU and you will realise the same eerie perfection discovered from Second Hand Daylight. I could go on forever about this album but feel a deep sense of connection with other reviewers here who have recognised it's genius also, and breathed the thin air!"

Buy Secondhad Daylight...scare your kids

L. D Henry | 09/27/2003

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Once upon a time way back when I was in college and had a lot of time to sit around listening to music I ran out I purchased a copy of 'Secondhand Daylight" I had found used. I was in my Siouxsie and the Banshees phase and had read that John McGeough (who had been briefly in the Banshees) had played guitar for Magazine. I was intrigued to find out he had spent some time in a mental institution whether or not this was actually true, it seemed pretty cool to me. As with most recordings that are my absolute favorite, I hated this record when I first listened to it. The first thing I could compare it to was Roger Waters in a really bad mood with a severe head cold. Needless to say, I finally came around and grew to love this music. It is beautiful, haunting, brilliant and funny and very far ahead of its time."